“The cruelty of it!” Beltran blurted out. “Kept alive by an enemy, knowing you are right and your own convictions are used to pull in the innocent and curious, so they can be made slaves for your jailors!”

Beltran is getting into this far more intensely than I’d’ve expected. Maybe it was his Herald training, but he’s seemed so much more reserved until now.

“He seems to get it,” a woman inside the chainlink said. The rest were coming out of a daze, but they didn’t seem to be hurt—just confused, as if waking from a nap. “Is this an Official Declaration, a Body Count, or just a Recreational Gloat?” The woman walked up to them and hung her arms through the chainlink grid. She was tattooed in patterns to the first knuckles on both arms, her hair was in tight, wooly curls, cut close to the head, and her eyes were sharp enough to cut flesh. “You’re all dressed up, aren’t you? Is it someone’s birthday?”

“Who are they, Scullen?” someone behind the woman called.

She answered, without taking her eyes off of Kordas and Beltran, “We-ell, you know how this place is, Scont, they may just be figuring that out themselves. Right, boys?”

Beltran answered immediately. “I know who I am, I’m just happy to find out I was right! There was tragedy just a little while ago, and my head hurts, but I went from being a servant to being an adventurer, like a hero in nearly fifty songs I know, and a few I don’t dare sing for anyone else. Also, I like how you talk, you are very pretty, and you scare me in some ways I think I like.”

“He’s intoxicated with the need to speak the truth,” said the person that the woman had called “Scont.” He came to the forefront of the cage. “Take deep breaths. Try not to think for a moment. Concentrate on who you are. And remember, the less you talk, the better off you’ll be.”

A tired old man joined them. “As for what this is? Besides being a prison and a trap, it’s a test with no answers, a test that only provides sadistic entertainment on the rare occasions our yellow toad of an Emperor deigns to look in on us.”

“How is it a test?” Kordas asked cautiously.